Archive for the ‘cottonwood’ Category

J.D. and Steven Phillips discuss the Coffield experience.​Call him Steven Phillips, collector of broken men. After all, he should know a thing or two about breaking. The man spent a quarter century in prison for a string of rapes in the early '80s. In 2007, he was released on mandatory parole to ease overcrowding in Texas prisons. The following year, through the efforts of the national Innocence Project, he was exonerated by DNA testing. Turns out, a man who'd died in prison a decade earlier was the culprit. Phillips was due a hefty payout through the state's statutory compensation scheme for the wrongfully imprisoned. With the money, he bought and restored a house and made some significant investments. But he also bought a two-story fixer-upper in Carrollton, not far from Interstate 35. It's one of three he owns -- one in Frisco and one in Lewisville, which he's about to sell due to the economic downturn -- that serve as "transitional housing" for the addicted, the paroled, the struggling. When he bought the house on Cottonwood Road, it needed a lot of work. So if a man couldn't pay rent, he worked it off by fixing up the house. It's still a work in progress, but it's come a long way -- fresh wood paneling on the ceiling and walls, new tile floors in the updated kitchen and gorgeous refinished wood floors in the living room. Phillips, a wiry guy with outsize forearms and shoulders, liked the metaphor it all represented: They restored the house and, in the process, restored themselves. "Everybody here's got a program," he said, referring to the faith-based 12-step program the men all participate in.